Gorky 2: My Apprenticeship
1939 film by Mark Donskoy
Gorky 2: My Apprenticeship (Russian: В людях, romanized: V lyudyakh) is a 1939 Soviet biographical drama film directed by Mark Donskoy.
Plot
The family is left with no money, and Alexei (Alyosha) Peshkov, kind and honest by nature, is sent by his grandmother to learn the drafting trade with his uncle. However, he is only given menial household tasks and, unable to endure the surrounding injustice, seeks other opportunities. After a failed attempt to join a group of barge haulers due to his frailty, he becomes a dishwasher on the steamboat "Dobry." Despite the cook's support, he is dismissed following false accusations by a thieving waiter.
Alexei then takes up work in an icon-painting workshop, where he grinds pigments and assists in the shop. However, when the clerk suggests he spy on the craftsmen and report back, Alexei's sense of dignity leads him to quit. Homeless and disillusioned, he decides to leave Nizhny Novgorod, seeking his fortune across the vast country, carrying only the small portrait of Mikhail Lermontov's Demon gifted to him by his colleagues.
Cast
Aleksei Lyarsky as Aleksei Peshkov (later, Maxim Gorky)
Irina Zarubina as Natalya, the washer-woman
Varvara Massalitinova as Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina
Ye. Lilina as Matriona Ivanovna
Ivan Kudryavtsev as Sergeyev, the son-in-law (as I. Kudryavtsev)
Nadezhda Berezovskaya as Ivanovna-Sergeyeva, daughter (as N. Berezovskaya)
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“Gorky 2: My Apprenticeship” enters the record as 1939 film by Mark Donskoy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gorky, Apprenticeship and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3053554. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939.
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